Precious Memories

Three years ago, a condition called ventricular tachycardia caused me to rather urgently need a drug called adenosine.   One of its side effects turned out to be memory loss.   Not just short term memory loss which can be attributed to the normal aging process ... not just the scarier version of short term memory loss which might be associated with Alzheimers ...  Adenosine left gaps in my history as far back as seventy years ago.  

What, exactly, is missing?   Well, I don't know.   If I knew, it wouldn't be missing. 

But ... several times, now, family discussions have touched on past events I know nothing about.   I had to know, they argued ... I was there.   How could I not know? 

I don't know.

Today, however, an old memory from 1943 rose from the depths and gave me great joy. 

It was a sleepy summer day ... I remember ... silence broken only by the occasional cackling of a distant hen, or the short-lived roar of a passing troop train.

A large family of paper dolls - carefully cut from an obsolete Sears Roebuck catalog - were neatly arranged on gray weathered front porch boards.  These miniature people were real to me.   A daddy dressed in suit and tie - quite unlike my own daddy's overalls - sat bolt upright on a tiny cardboard sofa.  The mother, wearing gloves and high heel pumps, sat primly beside him.  They'd just returned from church.  

Scraps of cloth left over from somebody's quilting project had become beds for sleeping children.  Scads of children ... boys ... girls ... babies ... lots of babies.  I tucked them lovingly into their tiny makeshift beds ... Betsy, Bobby, Janie and a dozen more.   I crooned lullabyes ... I made up elaborate bedtime stories ... my paper children were well-loved.

Then ... uh oh ... I had to go to the bathroom.  Small town reality in the 40's didn't include indoor toilets.   Instead, there was an outhouse ... way back behind the haybarn.   My bare feet raced to get me there in time. 

The return trip required an alternate route.  Two mean-eyed hens seemed waiting to ambush my bare legs so I opted for the long way round to the front porch, pausing only long enough to pull a bucket of cold water from the well.

Devastation met my eyes before I was halfway up the front steps.  My knees trembled as I eased myself back down on the porch floor beside those two fine church people and all their sleeping offspring. 

Their heads were missing.

I mean ... mama and daddy were still sitting on the sofa exactly where I left them ... Betsy, Bobby and all their many siblings were neatly tucked into their makeshift beds.   Not one thing was different except ... except ... their heads were gone.   

SOMEBODY HAD TORN OFF THEIR HEADS!

What was the appropriate thing to do when an entire family had been decapitated?   I didn't know.   I sat for awhile ... absorbing the shock, studying the eerie scene, mourning the loss, perhaps even shedding tears over precious little Betsy's blue dress napping neatly without its head.

Then anger took over.  The kind of anger that fills the air with red mist.   The kind of anger that drives a person to kill.  Yes!  That kind of anger.

I bolted from the front porch, crossed a narrow dirt road and plunged into the woods where I pawed the earth beneath ancient oak trees, searching for just the right size stick with which to kill my only brother. 

He was ten.  Three years older than my seven.  He was taller and he weighed more, but when it came to fighting I had one important advantage.  The 1943 rule book plainly stated that boys could not hit girls.  Girls could hit all they wanted, as hard as they wanted, and I planned to exercise my rights this day.   I would hit him 'til he was stone cold dead.  

I'd killed him before.  This would be nothing new.   Chances were good I'd be forced to kill him a few more times in the future.   My brother was simply a boy who required frequent killings.

My small hand closed tightly around the perfect weapon.

All I had to do now was find the guilty party.

It wasn't hard.   There he was ... catching crawdads in a small stream halfway between our house and the old country store.  He recognized danger the minute he saw me coming.  He was still weighing his options as I closed in on him.   Run fast or stay and dodge the blows or ... Oh, wait a minute!   Reaching in his pocket he jerked out a fistful of jelly beans, saying, "Here.   I saved  the yellow ones for you."   

Big stick paused in mid air.  

The taste of yellow jelly beans ... fresh from a little boy's dirty pocket ... might be more satisfying than a few bruises left on that boy's worthless hide.

Okay.   Truce.  

Tomorrow, I'd cut myself a bigger Sears family ....



email:  MelindaGerner@yahoo.com