There was one thing about Uncle Forrest that made him seem a little less intimidating—his index finger on his right hand had been chopped off at the knuckle. When I asked Momma about it she said it had happened when he was working in a bakery. I remembered her telling me he had dropped out of high school to work in a bakery to help out the family. She told me that for many years after losing his finger he had worked in the fish canneries in Monterey.
When I met Uncle Frank I expected to dislike him, since my mother never had anything good to say about him. Much to my surprise, he was a nice man, gentle and kind and very patient with me. He seemed to like me and he enjoyed showing me his art. He even spent time drawing pictures with me.
Uncle Frank was so gentle and sweet that I simply couldn’t understand my mother’s insistence on seeing him as bad. He told me stories of the days when he had paned for gold up in the “Mother Lode” country in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and about his time as a Merchant Marine during World War II. His ship had the distinction of having been torpedoed by German warships twice in two days. And he talked about how it was to work on a Lone Ranger set. They had filmed a Lone Ranger movie near Sonora called The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold, and he and Uncle Forrest had been hired to cook and bake for the actors and crew. Uncle Frank seemed to have lived an exciting life.
There was a softness to Uncle Frank that was missing in Uncle Forrest and my mother. He didn’t seem to need to be in charge like they did. Looking at Uncle Forrest and Uncle Frank, you would never imagine that they were even related. Forrest was darker and taller and bigger than his brother. He seemed to take on an elder sibling attitude toward Frank, too, even though he was three years younger. Frank was fair skinned and small boned and much more mild-mannered than Forrest.
Forrest looked like his father from the picture I’d seen. They both seemed harsh and even mean. Frank looked like my grandmother, sweet and kind.
I remembered the story my mother had told of how Frank, at seventeen, had been shipped off to California to stay with relatives because my grandfather could no longer afford to feed five children. I knew they had all suffered due to the Depression, but my mother had told me that Uncle Frank had suffered the most. He was a very talented artist, she said, so talented that he had won a full scholarship to a prestigious art school back East. But the family couldn’t afford the plane fare to get him there, or food and housing while he was in school, so he had to turn down the scholarship. Even though my mother reported that Frank was devastated by this, and that she thought this probably contributed to his alcoholism, it was clear she didn’t feel sorry for him.
I felt very happy being around my two uncles. I’d always missed having a father, or even a grandfather, so it satisfied a deep need inside of me. Even though Uncle Forrest could be gruff and even critical, I could tell he had fond feelings for me by the way he sometimes looked at me, and this made me feel good about myself.
Uncle Frank’s attention satisfied an even deeper need—the need to be physically close to a man. As I sat beside him while he shared his artwork or as we drew pictures together, I took in his maleness—the smell of his aftershave, the sound of his deep voice. When he hugged me I felt the roughness of the stubble on his face, and when he held my hand I let my fingers trace the calluses on his hands. All these sensations made me feel safe and secure in a way I’d never felt around women.
Between Uncle Frank and Uncle Forrest, I received more male attention there in Sonora than I’d experienced in my entire life. I’d always been surrounded by women and hadn’t really known what I was missing. Just like I felt when I ate something I really liked, I wanted more.
In spite of the fact that I missed Pam a lot, Sonora was a giant adventure for me. I loved the mountains, the clear, fresh air, the smell of pine trees, and the squirrels scampering about.
And it was also a healing experience. Opal loved to cook and bake, and this was a good thing since Uncle Forrest insisted on being fed the moment he became hungry. He was the opposite of my mother, who never seemed to get hungry. He insisted on Opal cooking a full breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, and expected fresh-baked pie or cake to be available whenever he wanted it. So Aunt Opal was constantly on the go—frying bacon and eggs and making biscuits and gravy for breakfast, fried potatoes and onions for lunch, and some kind of meat and potatoes for dinner. The duplex was always filled with the smells of fried food mixed with the sweet smell of pie or cake baking in the oven.
Opal was a cheerful person and seemed to really enjoy feeding people—again, the complete opposite of my mother. For the first time in my life, I felt filled up. The smiles and the smells of our new household wafted into the far corners of my body and soul, filling every crack and crevice. Finally, I was getting a glimpse of what a normal family home was meant to be. Closeness, togetherness, love, and warmth.
The only remnant of my old life was the way my mother continued to ignore Uncle Frank. She acted as if he wasn’t even there—looking right through him even when he
