By Karen Brode

I thought it was sad that I wasn’t allowed to go visit my father on the fifth floor of St. Paul’s Hospital. I knew that my daddy would want to see me. I was seven years old and I didn’t understand what the nuns had against children. Daddy and I could read the newspaper together if I could just go up there, but Mother explained that no children were allowed.

It was Sunday afternoon, November 19, 1961 and I was so bored sitting in the waiting room. The floor looked like a black and white checkerboard. I glanced across the room at all the people sitting in chairs–some of the women were knitting, some were sleeping. I watched my Uncle Travis read a magazine. I played hopscotch on the checkered floor, but even that got old.

Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, two little girls approached me to see if I wanted to play Hide and Seek. They let me hide first but they found me right away. I knew I would have to find a better hiding place next time.

They went to hide. I counted to 25 with my eyes shut. When I opened my eyes, Uncle Travis stood in front of me with his hand out to hold my hand.

“We’re going up to your Dad’s room now,” he said.

I reminded him I could’t go up there, but he said it was okay.

We walked hand in hand through the hallway. I looked up at the statues of the Catholic saints with their arms outstretched as if to comfort me. To me, though, their eyes were blank and unseeing.

As we walked past the Coke machine, I saw the two little girls.

“There you are!”  I exclaimed. I wanted to go back to play, but Uncle Travis shook his head and told me I needed to go with him.

He didn’t say anything when we were on the elevator going up to my dad’s floor. I wanted to remind him again that I wasn’t allowed, but he seemed distant and I got the feeling he didn’t want to talk.

The elevator doors opened and I heard my Aunt Winnie screaming hysterically. My brother, John, ran past me but didn’t seem to know I was there. My mother sat in a chair crying.

When she looked up, she said, “Honey, we don’t have a Daddy anymore.”

“Where is my Daddy?” I asked. Uncle Travis took me into the hospital room where my father lay. He didn’t look like Daddy, though. They had wrapped his head in bright white gauze bandages that made him look like he was wearing a turban. I knew he wouldn’t like that. Daddy wouldn’t like any of it.

“We’re going home now, Honey,” my Mother said.

“Is Daddy coming home, too?”  I asked. Mother put her head in her hands and cried in great heaving sobs and Travis took me to the snack machine.

“Would you like a Coke or I think they have sandwiches in here, too,” Travis said.

I didn’t feel hungry. I just wanted my Daddy to wake up and we could all go home and life would return to normal.

_______________________________________

Karen Brode grew up in Denison, TX and graduated from Denison High School in 1972.  She took courses at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and worked in a church office for 25 years.  She and her husband, Gary, have been married 39 years and they have one son, Brandon.  Karen’s hobbies are writing, sewing, and gardening.

By Karen Brode

It was a warm May morning and the last day of Billy’s speech therapy before summer vacation. He had turned five in April.

His mother, Becky, sat in the school cafeteria with three other mothers whose children were in speech therapy. They listened to second graders practice their end of year program.  They were performing a rendition of “Annie.”

“The sun’ll come out tomorrow….bet your bottom dollar that it will….”

The second graders looked so hopeful and certain that the sun would come out. Becky thought it probably would–for them. She wanted to think that the sun would come out for Billy, too; that all of the problems would be in the past. Tears ran down her face. She wiped them away in embarrassment.

“Allergies!” she exclaimed to explain her tears to the other mothers. Tears always seemed close. Winnie had died in February. She sorely missed having her aunt to talk to. Winnie understood her in so many ways that her own mother did not.

And Billy, she didn’t know a lot of other children, but he wasn’t like any of the children she knew. His preschool teacher had approached her the year before concerned about the way he sat in his chair. Panic set in as soon as the teacher mentioned that she didn’t think he sat normally. She went on to say that other things that weren’t quite right as well. She suggested that Becky take him to Children’s Hospital in Dallas, just to have him checked out. So she did.

At the hospital, doctors gave her a printed report that said her son was a little behind in speech and language development, but his IQ was in the normal range. There was a slight abnormality, though, on the right side of his brain, but it was barely mentioned in the report. She carried the report in her purse and often took it out to reread it. She prayed everyday that he would be okay.  She didn’t want anything beyond normal, average, or mediocre. She no longer wanted anything for herself. She only wanted Billy to be okay. That was all that mattered.

She thought that surely if so many people looked at her son and saw problems, there must be something that she was missing. When she mentioned this to her husband, he got angry and told her she was being ridiculous to let people upset her. But he wasn’t the one hearing things. He was safely at work protected from hearing the reports and seeing the concern on the faces of teachers.

One by one, different mothers went to talk to the speech teacher about their child’s progress during the past year. Finally it was her turn. Maybe it wouldn’t take long and she and Billy could go get an ice cream cone.

The teacher came to the classroom door and held it almost shut as if she were talking to a pushy door-to-door salesman. Billy stood in the hallway looking up at his mother and teacher.

“I don’t think there’s much else that can be done,” the teacher said. “I gave all the students a verbal test to assess their skills and everyone else did great on it. Billy just couldn’t do it.” She looked down at Billy. He looked up worried as if he thought he was in trouble.

“He couldn’t repeat the words I gave out, and the other children said them back in order. The only recommendation I can make is a class at Terrell Elementary school. It’s a class for children with special needs. Most of the children are still in diapers. It’s the only class I could recommend for him. He won’t make it in public school.”  And then, the speech teacher closed the door ever so slowly until it clicked shut.

Becky stared at the closed door and wished she could think of something else to say, something that would make all of this end better. Slowly, she backed away from the door, and took Billy’s hand. Her mind began to spin as they walked to the car.

Once there, she saw she had forgotten to take in the present they had bought for the speech teacher. Becky had carefully wrapped it the night before, but she had left it in the backseat.

Oh well, she thought. She took the package out and looked at the name tag: “To Mrs. Taylor from Billy.”  She placed the package in front of her rear tire and drove over it once, backed up over it, and then drove over it again.

________________________________________________________

Karen Brode grew up in Denison, TX and graduated from Denison High School in 1972.  She took courses at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and worked in a church office for 25 years.  She and her husband, Gary, have been married 39 years and they have one son, Brandon.  Karen’s hobbies are writing, sewing, and gardening.

By Karen Brode

It was Friday. Winnie could hardly wait for the school day to end. Her last class was math, and it came so easily to her that she almost got bored. She had carefully copied the math problems on her paper, and she methodically solved them one by one.

She listened to the other girls fussing about the complexity of fractions. It seemed so simple to her. She didn’t have a lot of patience with the other girls. Margie Linfield had hinted to Winnie that maybe she could come to her house one afternoon and they could do homework together. Winnie politely declined because Margie had never shown any interest in Winnie before. She wasn’t born yesterday. Let Margie have her parties and her blonde curls and her frilly dresses. Winnie would take the Math Award any old day over those things.

Soon, she stood up to turn her paper in, and the other students shook their heads. She was usually the first to finish her work. Mr. Haney, the math teacher, smiled at her and told her she could go ahead and leave if she wanted to.

She picked up her books and her purse, and left the classroom, but she couldn’t start home because she had to wait for Albert to get out of class. They had to walk home together. It was a rule.

She sat on a bench by the oak tree, and took out her book. It was not a book she had to read for school, but she loved to read. She had checked it out of the school library the day before. It was called, “Girl Of The Limberlost”. The night before, she had read up to page 44 and it was a book she couldn’t wait to get back to. She had very little time to read with all her chores and duties at home, but she took advantage of what little bits of time she had.

She looked up from her reading and saw Joel Sweeney waiting after class for Margie. Winnie watched as they walked off hand and hand. She looked down at her brown cotton dress. What was it about her that made boys look away and not even consider that she might be someone to get to know? She sighed as she looked for Albert.

It was getting late and her brother was nowhere around. Suddenly, Ernie Mullican came running past her. He shouted that the outhouse was on fire.

Winnie stood there for a moment and said a silent prayer.  “Lord, please don’t let it be Albert.”  But as she got closer, she saw that Mr. Haney had her brother and Reuben by the shoulders as they watched the outhouse burn.

—

“Why were you smoking in the outhouse?”  Winnie asked Albert as they walked toward home.

“Reuben brought the cigarettes. It’s the first time I ever smoked! I swear! Do you have to tell Daddy?”

“Well what do you think, Albert? After all, he is going to have to come up here over the weekend and build a new outhouse with Reuben’s father.”

She had never understood her brother. He wasn’t like her at all. In fact, when people discovered that he was her brother, they were often dumbfounded. They didn’t look alike or act anything alike. She was so careful to follow all the rules and she had never gotten in even the slightest bit of trouble in her life. She was a child the teachers loved. She was twelve years old and she had the responsibility of an adult. She wished that Albert would show some responsibility. He was soon to be nine years old. When she was nine, she was making biscuits and frying eggs for the family’s breakfast before she went to school.

Albert hung his head, and kicked dirt up with each step he took toward home. He could imagine how mad his daddy would be. He hadn’t done anything all that bad, but his father wouldn’t see it that way. Daddy expected all the children to be perfect like Winnie. Just thinking of his sister made him mad. He knew he could never be as good as she was, and he wouldn’t want to be.  She was a bore. If he had to spend his life like her, he might as well eat worms and die.

As they turned the corner and could see their house, Winnie saw Aunt Dollie sitting out on the porch with her mother. Aunt Dollie was holding the baby. It was the first time her aunt had seen little Travis. She and her daughter, Christine, had traveled from West Texas on the train. Winnie quickened her pace as she realized that Christine was there, too. Christine was not only her favorite cousin, but also her best friend!

As Albert walked up the front steps his mother admonished him to “Give Aunt Dollie a hug.”

He put one arm around her neck and kissed her on the cheek. He tried to remember exactly who she was, but his mother had so many relatives that it was hard for him to keep them all straight in his mind. He did know that all old ladies smelled the same; it was a cloying, sickening perfumey smell that repulsed him, but he tried to act nice anyway. He was already in enough trouble.

Dollie handed the sleeping baby back to Effie and stood up to hug Albert. “Oh, he’s the spitting image of Daddy, she said as she held Albert’s shoulders and looked him over. “This boy is John Gamble made over.”

Effie frowned. She didn’t want her son to look like her father. She didn’t want to even think about her father. Dollie wasn’t like her other sister Emma. She could not speak her mind with her like she could with Emma. Dollie liked to keep things pleasant and ignore the hard cold facts. It made Effie mad. She wanted Dollie to talk to her about how things really were. Sometimes she wanted to shake Dollie and say, I know you remember the night he came home drunk, and Momma had to hold his head over the porch railing.  When Effie brought these memories up, Dollie suggested that they let the dead rest in peace.

After Winnie hugged Aunt Dollie she put down her books on the porch and ran inside to see Christine. Winnie hugged her cousin and said, “After I get my chores done, we can go for a walk if you want to. And Momma said we could sleep in the living room and talk all night! Won’t that be fun?”

Something was different about Christine, though. She didn’t seem nearly as impressed with Winnie’s news as she would’ve been on her last visit. Winnie stepped back to look at her cousin.  She had her hair curled around her shoulders and she had on the prettiest pale pink dress Winnie had ever seen. It had a white collar attached, and Christine had on white patent leather shoes with little straps across her feet.

Winnie again looked at her mud colored dress that was ironed to perfection because she had ironed it last weekend. She felt that she had been ironing all her life, and it wasn’t something she enjoyed. She ironed her entire family’s clothes. This was after she washed them in lye soap on a washboard and hung them out on the line whether the weather was freezing or sweltering. Winnie guessed that Christine had not gotten up to do the family washing on a washboard before she went to school.

Christine’s hands were well-manicured, and Winnie instinctively put her hands behind her back to hide her short, bitten fingernails. She wanted pretty fingernails so bad. She believed that a woman’s fingernails reflected a great deal about her. But how could she have beautiful nails when her hands were either in lye soap or hot dishwater most of the time?

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Christine asked.

Winnie stammered a bit before she could say, “Well, not really.” She wanted to give Christine the idea of someone on the horizon, someone who was sort of a boyfriend. She felt suddenly embarrassed, ashamed that she didn’t have some boy running after her, begging her to accompany him to parties, carrying her books at school, holding her roughened hands and staring into her eyes.

In just that split second, she became more ashamed of herself in a way that she never had been before. She was ashamed of her sun-tanned leathery skin, her hair that she wore in a braid down her back. She was most of all ashamed of her horrible old brown dress. It might’ve been a flour sack at one time. Her mother dyed flour sacks to make Albert’s shirts and Winnie’s dresses. She looked down at her black no-nonsense shoes, and she wanted to cry. There was nothing about her that a boy would find attractive, or that even she found attractive. And that’s when she knew that Christine was looking at Winnie in a different light.

“There’s this boy at school,” Christine said. “His name is George Anderson. His eyes are dark brown and his hair is jet black. He’s going to preacher school when he gets through with regular school. He works on his Daddy’s farm, and he gave me this bracelet.” She held out her arm so Winnie could admire the bracelet with little trinkets dangling all over it. It tinkled as Christine walked into the kitchen.

Winnie followed her cousin, mostly because she didn’t want to let her out of her sight. Christine had wavy hair that looked like a picture in a magazine. Winnie suspected she was wearing lipstick, too. Not a lot, but just a little. Winnie wasn’t allowed to wear lipstick, but if she did, she would want it to look like Christine’s, sort of understated. Behind Christine was a wafting scent of some kind of powder in the air.  Winnie wanted so much to be more like her cousin. But how could she do it? She had no pink fabric to make a dress. Her mother had two shades of dye, navy blue and brown.

She looked at her cousin’s legs. It was hard to tell if she had shaved them, but Winnie thought she probably had. They were shiny. Winnie wanted her legs to look like that. She had strange hairs that grew very long on her upper legs which embarrassed her to no end. At least, all of her dresses came well below her knees so no one ever saw her upper legs. She stared at her so intently until Christine finally asked, “What do kids do around here on Friday nights?”

Winnie glanced around the kitchen. She didn’t know. She knew what she did. She would have to fix supper for the family, and then bathe the baby after she did the dishes. She had no idea what other kids did. She did not want Christine to look down on her or think that she wasn’t popular. It was her worst fear that this cousin–her favorite–would find out the pariah that she actually was.

She had heard Margie and the other girls talking about a moving picture show in Bonham.  Winnie had never been to a moving picture show, but she had heard about them. Sometimes, Albert’s friends came over and played hide and seek into the twilight, but Winnie knew that this would not interest Christine.

“There was a gospel meeting in Savoy last weekend, but I don’t think anything is going on there this weekend,” She finally said. She had not gone to the gospel meeting because she hadn’t had time, but she knew some of the other kids went. She also knew Margie and her friends went just to mingle with Savoy boys and flirt with some of the older men. The last thing on their minds was religion. If Winnie had gone to the gospel meeting, she would’ve taken her Bible and her notepad and taken it seriously. She would’ve sat close to the front and paid rapt attention.  She knew that Margie and her friends sat on the back row and giggled and passed notes to each other.

Christine commented that Ambrose was a dull little town, and Winnie had to agree. There just wasn’t a lot to do.

“We could go for a walk after I bathe the baby,” Winnie suggested. Christine shrugged as if that would be so boring but since there was nothing else to do, she might consider it.

_________________________________

Karen Brode grew up in Denison, TX and graduated from Denison High School in 1972.  She took courses at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and worked in a church office for 25 years.  She and her husband, Gary, have been married 39 years and they have one son, Brandon.  Karen’s hobbies are writing, sewing, and gardening.

By Karen Brode

It was so hot that the summer day shimmered in front of Winnie’s eyes. She wiped sweat out of her eyes over and over, but it kept coming back. She bent to pick a perfect cotton boll near the ground. Her hoe handle was beginning to get rough from so much use, and she would have to wrap some duct tape around it to keep from getting splinters.

She stood up to stretch her back and she saw Hazel farther down on  the next row. Hazel was so thin. Winnie feared that she might be pregnant again. Her sister-in-law wasn’t a strong person and she worried that she might not be able to carry another baby. Besides, no baby could be as perfect and wonderful as dear sweet little Kenneth. Winnie smiled just thinking of him back at her mother’s house playing with his little cars and trucks in the sand. Effie had felt like going outside in the shade and watching him so that Winnie, her daddy, and Albert and Hazel could pick cotton and make some extra money. Winnie was always ready to make a little extra money. She worked hard all year and she didn’t slow down in the summer. Hard work was what kept people going through all the trials of life.

As these thoughts played through her mind, she looked up to see that Hazel had dropped back so that she was across from Winnie.

“That river sure looks inviting this afternoon.”  Hazel said. Winnie nodded and dropped her hoe. Nothing would feel better than getting in the river and cooling off.

She and Hazel both wore long dresses and bonnets which would seem to make them hotter, but actually helped them keep cool. The dresses were calico prints they had bought when they went shopping in Bonham. A lot of their house dresses were made from flour sacks, but these were made of fabric from a store. Albert and his dad were almost to the other end of the cotton field, so the ladies walked toward the river by themselves.

The river was calm and when Winnie stuck her foot in, she could feel the relaxation take over. Hazel followed her into the river and soon they were splashing each other with water and wading farther out. They were about waist deep when suddenly Winnie disappeared. Hazel screamed and looked all around for Winnie.  Hazel couldn’t swim, but she went in the direction that she last saw Winnie, and suddenly, she too, went underwater.

When Winnie felt Hazel beside her, she pushed her further down and came up to the surface of the water.

“Help!”  She screamed when she could gather her breath. “Daddy! Albert! Help us now!” But then she was back under, and Hazel was crawling up Winnie to get to the surface.

Hazel put her arms on Winnie’s shoulders, pushing her down. She came up to the surface.  “Albert!  Albert!”

Albert and John Hawk were already at the river’s edge and they saw two bonnets floating in the middle of the river.

“Oh Lordy, son, we’ve got to get them out! You get Winnie Fay and I’ll get Hazel.”

Albert dove into the water and went straight to Winnie and began to pull her out but Winnie was beginning to drown. She hit Albert and wouldn’t let him get hold of her. In her mind, Albert had come to finish her off, to push her farther down into the deep, dark river where she would never see the light of day again.

Finally, Albert turned Winnie around so that he could grab her from the back and he began to swim toward the bank. The water was only deep in the middle of the river.  Albert was able to walk after only a few feet of swimming.  He dragged Winnie up onto the bank and began to do the chest compressions that he had learned as a firefighter. Soon, Winnie spit up a lot of river water, and began to breathe again.

Albert then turned his attention to Hazel. He saw her lying on the bank but his dad was standing in the river up to his chest. Albert ran to Hazel, and she was breathing but very, very tired and shaken, so he ran back to Winnie who seemed to have gotten the worst of it.

Albert looked down at Winnie and said, “You know you owe me now. I saved your life!”  Even though Winnie was still unable to do anything but breathe she smiled. She turned over on her side, and felt like going to sleep right there on the river bank. She would never want to go swimming again.

Albert went back to Hazel, and saw that she was sitting up now. “Good grief, Hazel, what were y’all thinking?”

“We just wanted to cool off and dip our feet in the water,” Hazel answered.

Albert looked at his father standing chest deep out in the river.

“Come on, Dad. Let’s get these girls home!”

“Son, you take them home and I’ll just stay here awhile.”

“What’s wrong with you, Dad?” Albert asked in frustration.

His father looked down the river before responding. “She ripped my overalls right off  me,  and I don’t have anything on underneath. The last I saw of my overalls they were headed toward Bonham!”

_________________________________

Karen Brode grew up in Denison, TX and graduated from Denison High School in 1972.  She took courses at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and worked in a church office for 25 years.  She and her husband, Gary, have been married 39 years and they have one son, Brandon.  Karen’s hobbies are writing, sewing, and gardening.

When I woke, I peered out the window and saw Aunt Winnie’s car parked in front of our house. She and Mother were in the kitchen talking. It was summer and only 7 AM. Already, Uncle Pete was mowing the lawn and I realized it was the mower that had woken me. I stretched and yawned and thought of how long the day would be.

“I just wonder if they administered those Catholic last rites to him before I could get in the room,” I overheard Mother say. “You saw how those nuns were running around there at the end. It would make him so mad if  they did some sort of Catholic ritual over him.”

“I know, Hazel, but there’s no use worrying about that now.”  Winnie said.  “We’ve got to try to put things back together the best we can.”

Mother went on. Her voice was shaky. “I know people get tired of me talking about it all, but I have to talk about it. I would go crazy if I couldn’t talk about it.” I heard her take in a deep breath. “I just don’t understand why I am still alive and he’s dead! It doesn’t make any sense!”

Winnie got her handkerchief out of her purse and blew her nose.

“I wish I had just let him stay home and die in peace,” Momma continued. “That’s what he wanted, but I thought if we went to the hospital, maybe they could help him.”

“You did the best you could Hazel. You did what anyone would have done,” Winnie said.

“They said he had been sick for years. And here I was blaming him and getting mad at him for the things he did and said and he couldn’t help it.” By this time, I had shuffled into the kitchen but did my best to stay quiet. Momma wiped her face with the dish towel and went to sit at the table with Winnie.

“Well, none of us knew he was sick. It was hard to deal with him. We all did the best we could,” Winnie said as she got her handkerchief out again to blow her nose.

_________________________________

Karen Brode grew up in Denison, TX and graduated from Denison High School in 1972.  She took courses at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and worked in a church office for 25 years.  She and her husband, Gary, have been married 39 years and they have one son, Brandon.  Karen’s hobbies are writing, sewing, and gardening.

By Karen Brode

“That boy needs to go to the Army!  It’s his only hope of being a man!”  Daddy said as he sat at the kitchen table smoking one cigarette after another.

Mother was crying as she did the dishes. She often cried when Daddy went on a rampage against John.

“I’ll sign the damn papers for him to go right now! The sooner the better in my opinion. What is he ever going to do if he does’t go to the military?” He asked Mother emphatically. “They will make a man out of him! He won’t be here in our house with you giving him everything he wants! That boy is a Morrison through and through!”

I listened in the hallway outside the kitchen and knew that, according to my father, being a Morrison was not good. Mother was a Morrison and her family was looked down on very much by my dad. Even though he talked down about them behind their backs, he was respectful and nice to them whenever they were around.

Once at the supper table, I had not been able to eat anything. Daddy didn’t think I should be allowed to not eat. He told me to eat what was on my plate, and before it was over, I was crying. I didn’t feel as if I’d ever want to eat again. Mother held her arms out to me, and I sat in her lap snuffling.

“Now you’re acting like a Morrison!” Daddy yelled. “I thought surely you would not be like the Morrisons!”

Mother cried off and on all that week, but in the end John went to join the Army. Daddy gleefully signed the papers for him to go, and Mother cried again when she had to sign the papers. John packed his bags and waited out on the front porch for his ride. Mother stood at the front door watching him and then looked back at Daddy who was sitting in the living room chair reading. As John’s ride drove up, he turned to let Mother hug him.

“Karen, come and hug your brother goodbye,” she said and I did as I was told. She glared at Daddy and said, “John is leaving now.”

“Good!” he said from his chair in the corner of the living room.

John turned and walked down the steps, out to the waiting car. Mother ran to grab John when he was midway across the yard. She was crying hysterically by then, and he turned to her and said, “Momma, I’ve got to go. I can’t stay here with Daddy treating me like he is.”

Momma let go of him and went to sit on the front steps.

I sat by her and tried to put my arm around her, but it wouldn’t reach. I wanted to comfort her, make her feel better.

“It will be okay, Momma.”  I said, and she pulled me onto her lap and hugged me.

_________________________________

Karen Brode grew up in Denison, TX and graduated from Denison High School in 1972.  She took courses at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and worked in a church office for 25 years.  She and her husband, Gary, have been married 39 years and they have one son, Brandon.  Karen’s hobbies are writing, sewing, and gardening.