By Karen Brode

Worship had gone pretty well, Winnie thought, as she put away the food from lunch.  She moved the green and white water pitcher aside and put the bowl of black eyed peas on top of the plastic container of tomatoes.  She really needed to clean out her refrigerator, but that was a job for another day. Sunday afternoon was her down-time. She and Pete usually went out to eat and then went by the hospitals to visit people they knew, but they had come straight home from church that day.

Pete had not done or said anything too outlandish in his sermon that morning, and she was thankful. People came to her when things didn’t go well at church, expecting her to do something about it.

A few months before, Pete had preached a sermon saying that Jesus Christ had come back in 1914. Winnie hadn’t known what to say when people surrounded her after worship to complain. She was just as outraged as all of them, maybe more. She wished her daddy had been alive and at worship that day. He would’ve stood up during the sermon and asked Pete where on earth he found that in the Bible? And now, people just sat there dumbfounded when Pete said things that made no sense.

Why hadn’t they complained to Pete? Was she really responsible for what he said? She had asked him about it at lunch that day, and it had grown into a huge argument between them. She wanted to ask him if Jesus came back, then where is He, but she bit her tongue. She struggled mightily with being a good submissive wife, and being an intelligent human being. Sometimes, it didn’t seem possible to be both.

Pete had defended his sermon to the end of the argument that day when Winnie got up to clear the table in silence. She left him sitting at the dining table with his Bible open . It was senseless to argue with him. She knew Jesus Christ had not come back in 1914. She hoped that the Ambrose Church would hire a real preacher soon and let her husband go back to being song leader. He would sing too loud and off tune but maybe people wouldn’t blame her for that.

He was watching football on the black and white television. It received only one channel. She hated that their Sunday afternoons were taken up with football. Once, the football game had been cancelled and they had shown “Francis, The Talking Mule.” It was so much more enjoyable than those infernal football games.

Winnie sat in her tan leather recliner to catch up on her letter-writing on Sunday afternoons. She kept all of her writing supplies in a white stationery box that no longer had any stationery. She used a lined tablet with tear-out pages to write her letters now. She leaned back in the recliner and put her feet on the foot cushion. She thought again about the story she had read in the newspaper about all the babies that had been killed by recliners made like hers. Who would have imagined that recliners would kill so many babies? The poor babies had gotten in between the foot cushion and the chair and then somehow closed the recliner on their necks. Where were their mothers? She was always extra alert when a baby visited her, especially Karen’s sweet baby, Brandon. She smiled at the thought of him.

She had sent her cousin, Foy,  a picture of him and Foy had written back to say he looked just like Winnie’s brother Albert. Winnie looked closely and decided that wasn’t true. Foy was telling her what she wanted to hear, but Winnie knew better. Karen had had a son who looked like her husband’s family and Albert was nowhere to be found in that child.

Winnie wished that Brandon had looked like her poor dead brother. She had waited at the hospital the evening Brandon was born and clutched Hazel’s hand as they took Karen into the delivery room. Winnie had been crying out of happiness and fear and mostly out of sadness that once again, her brother Albert had been denied this moment that should have been his. She was glad to be there with her sister-in-law, waiting to see the baby, but it wasn’t really her moment.

And then they had brought the baby boy out, and Winnie had cried with Hazel because this was Karen’s child, and because he was perfectly made. The nurses held him up to the window and Winnie looked at him and found nothing at all about him that reminded her of her brother or the Hawk family. But she already loved him because he was Karen’s child.

Winnie wrote to her brother, Travis every Sunday afternoon.  She loved her letters from Travis even though they were a little restrained and didn’t give away much that was really going on with him. He wrote about his grass and some tomato plants he had put out. She loved mostly to read about Kathy. Travis was so proud of her and often mentioned her accomplishments and accolades. Winnie remembered when Travis had written that Kathy was directing the Senior Play. He had been so proud, and Winnie was proud, too. But she felt removed from all of it. Here she was in north Texas where she wouldn’t even be able to attend the play. She felt that she had missed all the important times in Kathy’s life, and she wanted so much to be closer to her. Winnie loved Kathy simply because she was Travis’s daughter. She felt such a longing when she thought of Kathy. She wished that Travis had not moved his family to East Tennessee where there were so many miles between them.

Aunt Dollie had written most recently to Winnie, she she knew she must write back to Aunt Dollie first. This aunt was in her eighties, still in good health, and a study in calmness. Winnie marveled that the same family and parents who had produced Aunt Emma and her mother, Effie, had also produced this calm gentle woman who took life in stride. Effie and Emma had been at one or the other end of the emotional spectrum much of their lives. Either Emma was sitting on the cellar door laughing hysterically at Winnie being shut in the cellar, or she was crying about some cat that had lost her kitten. Effie’s tantrums had disrupted all of Winnie’s childhood, and most of her adulthood. Winnie was glad that she was more like her father. At least she had the ability to withstand the upheaval that her mother had created in her life.

Aunt Dollie lived in Slaton, on the west side of Texas, near Lubbock. A lot of Winnie’s relatives lived in West Texas and when she went on a pilgrimage to there, she went to see Uncle Jess and Aunt Dollie. Her aunt seemed to smooth all kinds of emotional waters as she walked past. Winnie could feel her blood pressure go down when she was with her. So many people in Winnie’s life needed something from Winnie, but Dollie was one of the few who gave her something in return. She felt secure and complete when she was around Dollie.

Her aunt was not heavy nor was she terribly thin. She had the big brown eyes that were so dominant in her mother’s family. Winnie sometimes wished that she had been Aunt Dollie’s daughter. How much more enjoyable her life would’ve been, she thought. But no, it was wrong to wish this! Winnie needed to be happy with the mother she’d  had.

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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

Mother sat on the couch reading the paper. I had been playing outside all day, and she reminded me to take a bath, but I paused to I ask her if Aunt Opal was still coming for a visit.

She sighed and said, “As far as I know, she’s going to Poppa’s house in Bells and she will probably come here in the morning.”

At that moment, we heard a car drive up and Mother looked out the window. There was her sister, Opal,  trying to get out of her car.

In a hurried voice she said, “Change your play clothes and put on some shoes. I don’t want to hear Opal talk about you running around barefoot like the…”

Her voice trailed off as she looked in the mirror. She brushed through her hair, as if that might help her look more like June Cleaver. Then she sprayed some “Evening in Paris” perfume on her neck.

She did all this in the time it took Opal to get out of the car. It always took my aunt a long time to exit a car. Everyone in the family had tried to guess what her weight was. It was a fairly agreed all around that she weighed at least 400 pounds.

Even though I was only 8 years old, there was something about Opal I didn’t like that didn’t have anything to do with her weight. There was just something about her. For starters, I had heard my mother talk about how her sister had treated her when she was a child. It made me mad that my aunt would tell my mother she looked just like Hence Lawrence, the ugliest girl in the county. After all these years, my poor mother still carried that thought around and probably believed it.

“Hazel! Karee! I’m here!” Opal yelled from her car.

I looked at Mother and said, “Will you please tell her that my name is Karen, and not Karee?”

Mother shook her head no. “Hopefully she won’t be here long and you can just let it go.”

“Well, if she’s going to call me Karee, I’m going to call her Lardbutt!”

Mother bent down toward me and said, “Don’t you ever say anything like that again, especially to poor Opal!”

We walked out on the porch and Opal motioned for us to go out to the car.

“I’ve got a new car! Did you notice?” she asked as she hugged us.

“Look her over and see if you can find the antenna,” she challenged. I didn’t see one. What I did see in the backseat were several very big suitcases and the dreaded wedge pillow.

“Give up? Well look at this back windshield,” she went on. “The antenna is inside it!”

Mother walked up to look at the window and said, “What are they going to think of next?”

Once we moved all Opal’s things into the house, she collapsed onto one of the chairs and said, “I’m just so tired after that drive from Fort Smith.”

I wanted to ask why she had even bothered to visit but Mother looked at me sideways and I knew I would regret saying anything like it.

Just then, Opal looked at her watch and said, “Oh my gracious! My favorite TV program is on now. Do you watch The Fugitive?” She mispronounced fugitive, but I didn’t say anything. I felt myself grow smug in the idea that I was smarter than she was.

Mother asked if her sister was hungry.

“Oh now, Hazel,” she responded. “I might could eat just a bite, but I not much. I stopped for a hamburger in Texarkana.”

Once again, I looked at Mother and knew I’d better not let my thoughts be known.

Mother told Opal to go ahead and watch her program while she rustled up some supper for us.

“Don’t cook anything special for me,” Opal yelled from her easy chair. Then she turned to me and said, “I never miss this show! It just keeps you on the edge of your seat thinking maybe he will be able to find the one-armed man before the cops find him! See, he was a doctor and he came home late one night and his wife was dead. Well, it’s coming on now, I’ll tell you more later.”

When The Fugitive was almost over, Mother called us to the kitchen for supper. I couldn’t watch as Opal struggled to get out of her chair. I knew I would laugh and Mother would be so ashamed of me. She wanted to raise a daughter with manners, and I tried to be that kind of daughter, but I didn’t come by it naturally. Once she had warned me not to climb in the front yard tree while Opal was there. My aunt was old fashioned and she frowned upon such behavior. I didn’t want to put on airs for Opal, but for my mother’s sake, I always refrained from climbing the tree when Opal was around. Even so, I tried to imagine what she would do if she saw me hanging by my legs on one of the lower limbs and the thought of it made me laugh.

Opal said grace over the meal, blessed everyone she could think of, and finally said Amen. Mother had some smothered steak left over from lunch, and her sister reached for the plate first. She took two large pieces leaving only one steak on the plate.

Mother’s look stopped me from reminding Opal that she wasn’t hungry. Then she cut the one remaining steak in half and put half of it on my plate. Meanwhile, Opal took three huge spoonfuls of mashed potatoes before handing the bowl to me.

As we ate, my mother and aunt exchanged news about their father, Poppa Morrison. He visited us every Monday night to spend the night. It didn’t matter what I wanted to watch on television, Mother reminded me that Poppa was old and should get to watch whatever he wanted. And Poppa always wanted to watch Gunsmoke. That wasn’t a show I could sit through for very long. Most of the time he fell asleep on the couch and made puff puff sounds with his lips. One time I stood over him and watched him do it. Mother told me not to bother him because he was old. It seemed to me like old people got all the breaks.

While Opal devoured the food on her plate, she said, “Well, I’ve got some really good news!”

Mother perked up and said, “Tell us!”

I wanted to ask her if she was leaving, but I didn’t dare.

Opal’s granddaughter, Laurie, had moved to Dallas after she graduated high school in Ft. Smith, and Opal was going to go to Dallas the next day to see her.

Mother asked, “Does she know you are coming?”

Opal shook her head no. She thought it would be better to surprise her. Mother cut her eyes to look at me, but I did not say a word.

We already knew that Laurie, who only weighed 300 pounds, was engaged to a boy in her singing group at church. Opal wanted to check him out, see how they looked together, and so on. She was so happy that Laurie had finally found someone who could see past the extra poundage, someone who want to spend his life with her. It would make Opal so happy to see Laurie happily married.

Mother had told me a long time ago that she thought Laurie had only told Opal what she had wanted to hear. In her letters to her grandmother, Laurie always mentioned a boy in her singing group at church. Mother figured she had convinced herself that he was her boyfriend and had led Opal to believe they were engaged.

For a long minute, Mother stayed quiet as Opal continued on. She seemed to be trying to come up with some way to warn Laurie of the impending disaster.

As dinner ended, Opal said she would have to go to bed soon so she’d be rested enough to drive to Dallas the next day.

“Karee, would you get my wedge pillow for me?” she asked.

I groaned inside at the thought of that pillow. I hated that I was always the one who had to carry the wedge pillow into the house. But then it occurred to me, if she went on to bed, it would be worth it.

As I got up from the table, Opal said, “Karee, you would look so much better if you stood up straight.” I paused for a moment, counted to 10, and then slumped my way to her car.

Mother and Opal sat up late in the living room talking about different people in the family, and why one got a divorce, why another one never visited, and why on earth 75-year-old Poppa Morrison thought he could get married again.

“It makes me absolutely ill that he would cry over that woman,” Opal said. “If she seemed interested in him, it would have to be about money.”

“I just don’t know,” Mother sighed. “It’s all he talks about when we’re there. And, of course, I have to go the grocery store in Bells for him, and he always asks me to get him some snuff!”

Poppa Morrison used an empty coffee container as his spittoon. If I had to walk past him, I kept my eyes on something else and thought to myself, “Don’t look. Don’t think about it.” Once I had looked at it and gagged. I didn’t want to do that again.

It was very late when the two sisters decided to play a record. They played Ken Griffin’s “You Can’t Be True, Dear”  and cried. Then they moved on to talking more about Laurie.

Opal confided to Mother that Laurie had had such a hard time in life because of her weight. Mother offered up the suggestion that maybe Laurie just had big bones.

“Well, you are right that she hardly eats a thing, and somehow she can’t lose weight,” said Opal.

I lied in my bed listening to them. When I heard this, I put my face in my pillow and laughed hysterically.

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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.