My brother seemed hyperactive, but quite mature. He liked to amuse us, saying things like, "Daddy says-me king, you slave," laughing hysterically, and causing us all to do the same, acknowledging our shared opinion that our dad thought children were miniature workhorses, made to do his bidding.
Elton's middle name should have been "work". Once he was old enough that Daddy didn't worry about his getting hurt on the machinery, he became a regular gin hand when he wasn't in school. Neila still held bad memories on her own and Elton's behalf about another job, the cold, messy and just generally awful work Daddy made them do taking care of the ill-fated mink operation when they were not even ten years old.
Elton never said much about it. He moved perpetually and endlessly, so maybe cutting up and grinding frozen meat for the vicious furry animals was just one more thing to take up his time and energy. At any rate, this all took place before I was born, and he got his picture in an agricultural magazine with Daddy, smiling like he enjoyed the mink project, though that was far from the truth. We could get Neila started on a righteous tirade about child labor just by saying the word "mink", which we did on days when we needed stimulation or wanted to get her riled up.
Ever since the older kids fended for themselves two years earlier while our parents and the three younger kids went to California for the summer, Elton had seemed like a grown man.
I saw him so little his senior year in high school, I almost forgot he lived with us.
He rushed into the house at sporadic intervals, grabbing food on the run, changing clothes, hurrying either to work, to get Deanna for a date, or just to her house to visit. Sometimes he'd kiss Jan and I on the head as he passed, or scoop one of us up for just a few seconds and squeeze us affectionately.
"Gotta go," he'd tell Mother, who more often than not, was standing in front of the stove cooking. "Be back later. Not too late."
Mother might not always agree with him, but she knew he was as headstrong as she, and whatever he decided, he would do. So, when he graduated high school, he immediately got a job at Chattanooga Glass Factory, where he earned a decent wage working in temperatures that were not for weaklings.
He somtimes brought us glass Coke bottles that had been purposefully misshapen in the production process. Some had long looped necks, others looked like a squatty version of the real thing, and still others were enormous, at least three times the size of a regular bottle. The production line turned out thousands of coke bottles every day. It was hot, gritty work, but Elton seemed to thrive on it; I thought he liked it because it kept his energy properly drained to a normal level.
Once he had a job, talk of marriage was not far behind.
Everyone dressed in their Sunday clothes, except Stephen, who dressed like a rural Elvis, and on that blistering July day, we drove to the Fulton's house, the whole family. The preacher was there, and Deanna wore a lacy white dress that accented her tiny waist and slender frame and a dainty little hat, of a popular style. Happiness made my lungs feel tight because I felt like another person was being added to our already large family, and I was thrilled.
She was an only child, whose parents seemed to never speak above a whisper, but she didn't seem too shellshocked by our robust family. A Purdon girl, she had attended school and church with us for years, so she knew pretty much everything about us. Once they settled into their apartment, they promised me that I could come and spend the night with them. I knew not to ask if I could go with them tonight, but I hoped it wouldn't be too long.
They stood holding hands in the Fulton's living room, their soft vows carried through the open windows on the breeze that gently stirred the lace curtains. The drone of buzz fans masked the outside sounds of crows squawking and cars speeding down the dirt road in front of the house, spewing dust behind them like tornado tails.
The fans' sound was familiar, hypnotic. It was the background hum to all the vows pronounced that day by the preacher and the participants. And it was a good thing the ceremony was short, because I started getting really sleepy just before the preacher said "you may kiss the bride." I perked up at hearing those words; I sure didn't want to miss that part. We ate wedding cake and drank punch in the dining room, and later, everyone gathered for pictures in the front yard.
Shortly after the pictures were taken, Elton and Deanna got in his, now their, 1949 Plymouth coupe, and sped away toward their new life. A few months before, practically the whole town gave them a huge wedding shower held in front of the Purdon School on the lawn, with folding chairs lined up for what seemed like blocks. But today, it was only family and a few friends to share their joy. I never thought of it as them starting their own family. It just seemed like ours got bigger, and that suited me fine.
Today was only the second wedding I had been invited to, having attended one in Smithville, Texas a few months earlier, in March, when my uncle, Bo Newlin, married JoAnn Hart. He was my mother's baby brother, twelve years younger than she, and had graduated from Texas A & M, a member of the respected Aggie Corps, then enlisted in the Army, where he became a helicopter pilot. My mother worried some about this. Their brother Johnny was a navigator aboard a plane in World War II that never returned from a mission in the Pacific.
The family piled into two cars for the trip south, and when we got there, Mother let us go in and see the bride, who was getting dressed in her lacy dress and veil. Mesmerized would be the right word. I had never seen anyone who was going to get married in a church, much less in a "real" wedding dress and veil. Mother shooed us out soon enough, and we left our soon-to-be aunt alone to finish her preparations.
My Granny Newlin, my mother's mother, had arrived and was getting out of their light green Chrysler. I wondered if my soon-to-be-aunt had noticed how quiet she was or that she sometimes just smiled at you when you asked her something, never answering, making you wonder whether she heard you or just didn't care to respond. It confused me, but I'd learned not to ask her any questions. I just kissed her on the cheek when I saw her and tried not to bother her further.
"Hi Granny. Glad you got to come." we each said, standing in a line of three to kiss her on the cheek. Me first, Susan, then Jan. Kiss, kiss, kiss. She stood smiling, looking not at us, but at some unseen place beyond our shoulders, a place we would never share with her.
"Granny," I offered, trying to make small talk, "I'll turn "Lassie" on for you after the wedding when we come back to the house." I knew she liked to watch Timmy and Lassie. I then remembered it wasn't Sunday, though, and "Lassie" wouldn't be on, but I didn't say anything to anybody. Maybe Granny would forget by the time the wedding was over.
"Let's go, Mother," Granddad said in his mellifluous voice, taking her small hand gently and guiding her toward the church. "It's almost time for the wedding."
As it turned out, our uncle, whom we all loved dearly, had chosen a girl who liked little kids too, and pretty soon, Susan and I were being invited to spend time with them in Mineral Wells, Texas which seemed like exotic territory to us. We felt so fortunate to get to visit with them. Jan was too little to come.They made each visit special by taking us skating, to play miniature golf, out to eat, or to buy ice cream or another summer treat.
In the same way we had drawn the questionable White family's kids in California to us-- like snake charmers, we managed to attract a couple of girls who wanted to play with us within hours of landing in my aunt and uncles' home in Mineral Wells. My aunt let us visit them, but spent the next five days making them get away from the screen door where they pressed their noses each morning until she let them in or made them go home.
She expressed surprise at how we attracted kids like magnets. "You girls haven't been here 24 hours and you've already made friends," she said, glancing toward the screened door where the two Hedspeth girls peered in. "Do you want me to let them in?" We bored of them quickly and preferred to play with each other, so we didn't care if she made them disappear. We got where we'd run to the bedroom and hide till they went away each day.
I should have warned her. At home, there were always kids in and out of our house. It was like a clown car house, with no end to the number of kids coming out on any given day. No one ever seemed to know where they all came from, how they got there, who invited them, or when they'd stop coming.
All in all, the weddings came out in my favor and provided me with more activity, places to go, and people to impress. Failing impressing them, I just tried to be on good behavior so they'd invite me over to their house again. Those invitations usually meant I got taken for some sort of special activity or treat.
I was going to talk about funerals, but although my parents faithfully attended visitation times for families who had lost someone, and usually the funeral too, we never went, at least Susan, Jan, and I didn't. I think the older kids went to the funerals of our neighbor Evelyn's boys, both of whom died tragically in accidents.
But we, the "little girls", were shielded from those events, and somehow by the time we moved from Purdon several years later, we still had not attended a funeral, something my dad thought was a rite of passage and my mother wanted us to avoid as long as possible. My parents could see some good in everyone, and they attended the services for the errant among the Purdon population as well as the saints, always finding something decent to say about the deceased.
Elton and Neila sometimes mimicked Mother's genuine, sometimes slightly odd, expressions of concern.
"He wasn't mean when he was drunk," Elton said, patting an imaginary shoulder.
"And he was really funny, even when he was drunk." Neila piped up, taking over imitating our mother.
"Yes, yes, I know," Elton said, nodding slowly, now playing the role of the deceased's relative.
I never wanted things to change. I wanted to remain anchored in place, but even though the weddings were welcome events for me, they reconfigured my world. My brother would leave our family and start his own; shortly, my uncle and aunt would move far away to Washington state.
Neila would soon leave for college, and who knew what other changes would happen? I just prayed my place remained secure. I had layers of family around me, and I liked it that way, wrapped in a family cocoon, spun by countless threads: years of visiting one another, caring about one another, celebrating births, birthdays, weddings, hospitalizations, traumas, knowing one another in that raw way that families do. I was content to remain a worm as long as I had that security. I had plenty of time to break out on my own and become a butterfly. Much easier to stay here protected and shielded.
There were dark moments-my dad's temper sometimes flared, and we skittered away like rabbits running from the headlights of a car. But we were never afraid of him. In fact, we knew his tantrum would just run its course and flame out , a short rope burning on gravel, curling up harmelessly, blackened and damaged, causing no serious harm. We just tried to stay out of his way so we wouldn't have to deal with it at all, sometimes laughing among ourselves behind his back about the trouble he caused himself through his little fits. And through everything, we had that cool, serene, calmness and strength that was mother. And it was enough.
Installed
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