Chapter One
1957 — Gone
I am five years old the first time my mama goes away.
Gramma stands in my mama’s place outside Immaculate Conception, squinting in the summer sunlight. She’s got the baby, Samuel Taylor, on one hip, and my other brother, Henry David, hangs off her right arm.
“Where’s my mama?” I ask her. “Are we getting another baby? We really need a girl this time!”
Gramma doesn’t answer, just gets that look all my grownups get sometimes. She turns and nods toward the black Desoto with the sweeping fins, parked partway up on the curb. My daddy says Grampa doesn’t know to stop unless he runs into something. You can hardly see Grampa’s head over the steering wheel.
I love Grampa’s car. He calls it Liz, or sometimes Titsloren, which makes my mama punch him on the arm and say, “Not in front of her,” which means me. The car gleams, because he washes it every day and shoe-polishes the whitewalls. Inside, it’s red—my favorite color, even if it does clash with my red hair, which isn’t really red, more orange. I need to ask Grampa what whorehouse means, because that’s what my daddy says whenever he sees that car. I think maybe Grampa will let me drive, so I run around to his window and lean in. He’s already scooting back the seat just enough to squeeze me in.
Gramma puts the baby in the port-a-crib in the back seat. Henry David crawls up on the window ledge in back to stretch out. I can’t believe he rides like that even when it’s this hot, but you can’t tell him anything. Gramma gets in and slams the door a little harder than you really have to for it to close. Grampa looks at her over the rims of his little round sunglasses but just says, “Olivia,” in his don’t voice. Grampa’s car doesn’t have a regular PRNDL handle, so I push the D button, and off we go.
Grampa gives directions and works the pedals since I can’t reach, but I do all the really hard work, like steering and staying inside the lines and ducking when the deputy rolls by in his patrol car. I tell Grampa when to slow down or go fast—which I don’t, hardly ever—and when he needs to start braking. He says, “Good girl!” when I get it right and “Are you sure?” when I don’t, and he never, ever yells at me. Sweat rolls down the backs of my legs from the bend in my knees, but there’s a breeze through the open windows, so it’s not really like an oven like Gramma says.
We turn right at the last corner, which means we’re going to the Tastee Freeze instead of straight home. Now I’m sure it’s a new baby, because we always go to the Tastee Freeze when they’re picking out a new baby. I can’t wait to tell my daddy when he gets home. We get out of the Desoto to eat our ice cream, because nobody ever eats anything in Grampa’s car. He asks me about vacation Bible school. Me and Grampa wonder if the sisters don’t get real hot in their getups. I think they should at least have short-sleeved ones for summer, or maybe some other color instead of black, and Grampa says I ought to tell Mother Superior that. Gramma spills her ice cream on the baby, which makes him cry, and she says, “Good heavens, Edwin!” and then it’s time to go. I let Grampa drive by himself this time so I can sit in the back and hang my head out the window to catch the breeze.
Gramma and Grampa are fussing in the front seat, which is something they always do when they think nobody’s listening. I’m always listening, even when I’m not supposed to be. They are talking about “someplace nice,” “getting help,” and “he’s her problem”—stuff that doesn’t make any sense, but that I save for when it will. Gramma keeps looking back to make sure I’m not paying attention, and I keep looking out the car window.
At Gramma’s house, Grampa’s already set up the wading pool, and after he scoops out the drowned ants, me and Henry David strip down to our underpants and splash all the water out quick as we can. Grampa chases us around the yard with the hose, threatening all kinds of stuff we know he’ll never do. After he refills the pool, Grampa pulls up his lawn chair, putting his feet in the pool and the baby between his feet. We all mostly just loll around. We’re careful not to get Samuel Taylor’s face wet, or he’ll cry, and that’ll just bring Gramma down on us and then we’ll all have to take a nap.
Mostly, I’m hoping that Gramma brought my new dress to wear to the hospital and all the petticoats that go with it, and that she remembered to bring ties for the boys, even if she thinks it’s silly to put ties on little boys. My daddy’s real particular about how we look when we go out with him, and I don’t ever want to disappoint my daddy.
When I’m all pruned up, I ask Grampa, “When are we going?”
“Going where?” he replies in his not-really-paying-attention voice, twisting Samuel Taylor’s wet hair into curls.
“To the hospital, Grampa!” Sometimes, you gotta remind him about stuff, because his mind just wanders off. Grampa scoops up the baby and scoots real fast across the yard, hollering “Olivia!” in his come-here-right-now voice. Gramma opens the screen door, wipes her hands on her apron, and says it’s time for a nap and she can’t believe he let us run around out there half-naked for the whole world to see.
Gramma drags me inside and stands me up on the toilet seat lid to brush and re-braid my hair while Grampa puts the boys down. She’s not real careful about the tangles like my mama is. But Gramma’s much better at keeping up with things than Grampa, so I ask her, “When are we going to the hospital?”
Gramma stops braiding for just a minute, and it gets real quiet. She says, “We’re not going to any hospital.”
“But who’s gonna pick out the new baby? If we let my daddy do it, he’ll just get us another boy.”
“Good heavens! The things you say! The last thing your mother needs is another baby! That’s not where your father is.” She’s braiding my hair real tight now and jerking my head back a little while she does, but she doesn’t mean to. Gramma’s just excitable.
“Well, where are they then? We didn’t get the map out. We always get the map out.” They go away a lot, my mama and my daddy. We always get the map out so I know where they’ll be, and can worry about the right stuff—like alligators if it’s Florida, or avalanches if it’s Minnesota, or earthquakes if it’s California, or seat cushions that float if it’s Havana. And I still worry about that one all the time, because not one of the chair cushions I put in the pool ever floated, not even for a minute.
A native of nowhere and a traveler everywhere, Terry Watkins has been on the road since the day she was born. She has visited all seven continents, and particularly enjoyed being shipwrecked in Antarctica. The notion of rootlessness permeates her life and writing. Terry came to writing as a teacher of middle-grade students. While demonstrating how to write a personal narrative, she found her own voice on the page. It wasn’t until she joined a writing workshop group that she began to think of herself as a writer. When not writing or traveling, T.C. reads, knits, and putters in the garden. A survivor of a large family, she has a stepson, a daughter-in-law, and two grandsons, all of whom she adores.
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